Volume 38 · Issue 1

Summer 2004

ARTICLES

William Blake and His Circle: A Checklist of Publications and Discoveries in
2003

By G. E. Bentley, Jr.
With the Assistance of Hikari Sato for Publications in Japan and of
Ching-erh Chang for Publications in Taiwan

The annual checklist of scholarship and discoveries concerning William Blake and his circle
records publications and discoveries for the year (say, 2003) and those for previous years which are not
recorded in Blake Books (1977), Blake Books Supplement (1995), and
“William Blake and His Circle” (1994-2003). The organization of Division I of the checklist is as in
Blake Books (1977):

Criticism, Biography, and Scholarly Studies
Note: Collections of essays on Blake and issues of periodicals devoted entirely to him are listed in one
place; their authors may be recovered from the index.

Division II is organized by individual (say, William Hayley or John Flaxman), with works by
and about Blake’s friends and patrons, living individuals with whom he had significant direct and
demonstrable contact. It includes Thomas Butts and his family, Robert Hartley Cromek, George Cumberland, John
Flaxman and his family, Henry Fuseli, Thomas and William Hayley, John Linnell and his family, Samuel Palmer,
James Parker, George Richmond, Henry Crabb Robinson, Thomas Stothard, John Varley, and Thomas Griffiths
Wainewright. It does not include important contemporaries with whom Blake’s contact was
negligible or non-existent, such as John Constable and William Wordsworth and Edmund Burke. Such major figures
are dealt with more comprehensively elsewhere, and the light they throw upon Blake is very dim.

Reviews, listed here under the book reviewed, are only for works which are substantially
about Blake, not for those with only, say, a chapter on Blake. The authors of the reviews may be recovered
from the index.

I take Blake Books (1977) and Blake Books Supplement
(1995), faute de mieux, to be the standard bibliographical books on Blake2↤ 2. Except for the states of the plates for Blake’s commercial book engravings, where the standard
authority is Robert N. Essick, William Blake’s Commercial Book Illustrations
(1991). and have noted significant differences from them.

The status of electronic “publications” becomes increasingly vexing. Some such works seem
to be merely electronic versions of physically stable works, and some suggest no more knowledge than how to
operate a computer, such as reviews invited for the listings of the book sale firm of Amazon.com, which are
divided into those by (1) the author, (2) the publisher, and (3) other, perhaps disinterested, remarkers. In
my experience, they rarely provide more than fool’s gold. For instance, on 3 March 2004 “Bentley,
Stranger from Paradise” (without quotation marks in the search) had 772 Google entries, which
included catalogues (e.g., Tuscaloosa Public Library), academic course prospectuses, curricula vitae, Town
& Country Toy Dog Club of Greater Andover, Karaoke WOW!, and endless offers for sale, while
“Stranger from Paradise” had 2920 entries. I have not searched for electronic publications, and
I report here only those I have happened upon which appear to bear some authority.5↤ 5. See for instance entries for 2002 Northwestern exhibition (review); Bentley,
Stranger from Paradise (review); Butlin; Connolly; Essick and Viscomi; Friedlander; Goldberg;
Howie; Kraemer; Lussier; Prickett; Rix.

I should be most grateful to anyone who can help me to better information about the unseen
(§) items reported here, and I undertake to thank them prettily in person and in print.

Research for “William Blake and His Circle, 2003” was carried out in the Bibliotheca La
Solana, Huntington Library, University of Miami Library, University of Toronto Library, and the Toronto Public
Library.

Symbols

* Works prefixed by an asterisk include one or more illustrations by Blake or depicting him.
If there are more than 19 illustrations, the number is specified. If the illustrations include all those for a
series by Blake, say for Thel or his illustrations to L’Allegro, the
work is identified.

§ Works preceded by a section mark are reported on second-hand authority.

Abbreviations

BB

G. E. Bentley, Jr., Blake Books (1977)

BBS

G. E. Bentley, Jr., Blake Books Supplement (1995)

Blake

Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly

BR (2)

G. E. Bentley, Jr., Blake Records (Second Edition) (2004)

Butlin

Martin Butlin, The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake
(1981)

Blake Publications and Discoveries in 2003

Blake studies are alive and well in 2003. This checklist records 50 books, 205 essays, and 47
reviews, and certainly there are some which have been overlooked, particularly reviews. The books include 17
editions of Blake’s writings and art, 8 exhibition catalogues of 1919, 2001, 2002, and 2003, and 5
dissertations, from Florida, Hungary, Iowa, Southampton, and Texas.

The works recorded here come from around the world, not only from English-speaking countries
such as Australia, Britain, Canada, India, and the United States, but from xenophonic countries as well. There
are works in Chinese (15), French (3), German (2), Hebrew (4), Hungarian (2), Italian (3), Japanese (34),
Korean (4), Russian (1), and Spanish (8). The works in Hungarian are supplemented by an English essay in a
Hungarian journal and a book in English which was a Hungarian doctoral dissertation, and there are English
essays in journals in Japan and Taiwan (6).

The most striking innovation here is in the number of works about Blake from Taiwan. When my
wife and I went to Taiwan in 19706↤ 6.
Because of Senator McCarthy and his ilk, it was not convenient to go to China in 1970. to
work in the National Library for a week, we found, as I recall, no Chinese work by or about Blake, though my
wife, playing hooky, found one work by my mother and several by my father—more, to her disrespectful
delight, than by me. Consequently we spent a wonderful week at the National Palace Museum.

Thirty-four years later, Professor Ching-erh Chang of the National Taiwan University compiled
“William Blake in Taiwan: A Bibliography,” of which he very generously sent me a copy. This includes a
poem by Blake translated in 1960 (omitted below), a translation of Blake in 1966, and 20 publications about
Blake in Taiwan—plus 6 M.A. theses dealing with Blake.7↤ 7. Pei-chün Chen, “Blake shire zhong shehui piping zhi yenjiou ji qi yu Yingyu jiaoxue shang
zhi yingyung [A Study of Social Criticism in William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of
Experience and Its Application to English Teaching],” National Chang-hua Normal University [Taiwan]
(1997), 121 pp., in Chinese (Chapters 1-3 deal with “The Little Black Boy,” “London,” “The Chimney
Sweeper,” “Holy Thursday,” and “The Garden of Love,”; Chapter 4 is how to apply “London” to
English teaching). Beatrice H. C. Hsü, “William Blake Revisited: A Kabalistic Reading,” National
Chung-shan University [Taiwan] (1993), 99 pp. Yün-shan Leu, “Goodness and Evil: Human Nature in Blake’s
and Wordsworth’s Poetry through the Relationship of Innocence and Experience,” National Chung-shan
University [Taiwan] (1992), 95 pp. (it examines how Blake’s Songs and Wordsworth’s
Prelude and other important works express their views on society and human nature by means of
the contraries of innocence and experience). Ching-hsüan Li, “Innocence and Experience in Blake’s
Poetry,” Chinese Culture University [Taiwan] (1973). Jerry Chia-je Weng, “Re-visioning Milton: William
Blake and the Poetics of Appropriation,” National Taiwan University (2003), 121 pp. Jin-li Xie, “Chastity
and the Feminine in William Blake’s Poetry,” Providence University [Taiwan] (1994), 145 pp. (the context
of mysticism exonerates the feminine in Blake’s archetypes).

A problem arises with the transliterations of works from Taiwan. Recently the Pinyin system
of transliteration, adopted in China in 1949, was introduced in Taiwan. However, it is still customary to give
proper names of Taiwanese authors in the older Wade-Giles system. The same Chinese character for a proper name
may therefore be transliterated differently in Taiwan, in China, and in Japan. This is particularly trying
with family names, which may appear in different places in an alphabetical list according to the system of
transliteration used.

Other evidence of Blake’s international and polyglottal appeal is the record of Mr. Taro
Nagasaki’s Blake collection, now partly in Kyoto City University of Arts. The collection, formed early in
the twentieth century, consists of 52 books, including a number with Blake’s commercial book illustrations.
At the time it was formed, it was probably the largest collection of Blake’s commercial book illustrations
in Japan—and perhaps it remains so today.

Blake’s Writings

There are relatively few significant discoveries or publications concerning Blake’s
writings.

Original Works

Newly uncovered sketches for The Book of Thel and
Europe are reported by Robert N. Essick and Rosamund Paice, and a few more details of
Songs of Innocence and of Experience contemporary facsimile (Beta) are recorded by courtesy of
its Toronto owner.

A couple of well-known works have changed hands. Blake’s letter of 18 January 1808 (A)
has been sold to yet another anonymous collector for a huge price (£40,000), and, on the death of Sir Paul
Getty in 2003, Songs of Innocence and of Experience (P) passed, perhaps permanently, to the
Wormsley Foundation.

A previously unrecorded copy of For the Sexes: The Gates of Paradise pl.
2 has surfaced in the collection of Professor Harold Bloom.

Most excitingly and tantalizingly, Robert N. Essick reports rumors of an unknown copy of
Poetical Sketches. What other treasures remain to be discovered? The copy of
Outhoun offered for sale about 1828 by Catherine Blake found in a cottage in County Durham? The
huge “Ancient Britons,” lost since 1809, in a loft in rural Wales?

Reprints and Translations

There is a new edition of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, tr. Giora
Leshem (1997) in Hebrew.

Collections and Selections

The new editions of Blake’s selected works offer little in the way of solid new knowledge
to Blake students. A few are doubtless useful as introductions to Blake in areas where English is not the
first language, such as Blake no kotoba [Aphoristic Words from Blake], ed.
Soetsu Yanagi (1921) in Japan, a new edition of Ol mi-shire blak ve-kits [More
from the Poetry of Blake and Keats], tr. Joshua Kochav (1980), Tenison, robert herik, edgar
alan po, vilyam blak, vilyam ernst henli, heinrikh heine, tr. Samuel Friedman (1986) in Israel,
William Blake: Versek és Próféciák [Poems and Prophecies], ed. Miklós
Szenczi (1959) in Hungary, and Poesía completa: Versión, prólogo y presentación Francesc
LL. Cardona (1999) in Spain. And it is perhaps worth drawing attention to a work in Catalan which is excluded
from the list below because it is a multi-author anthology: William Blake, William Wordsworth,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats: Poesia, veritat i vida, Presentació i
traducció de Joan Solé (Barcelona: Columna Edicions, Dec. 2001) Clàssics i Moderns Columna, 8°, 248 pp.;
ISBN: 8466401873; its “Notas biogràfiques” includes “William Blake (1757-1827)” (19-28); the Blake
texts from Ostriker consist of All Religions are One, There is No Natural Religion, and
Marriage of Heaven and Hell (61-88), all of course in prose.

The William Blake Archive (www.blakearchive.org) continues to expand its resources, with
reproductions of Urizen (B), the engraved designs for Blair’s Grave,
Blake’s watercolors for “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity” and Paradise Regained,
a biography, a glossary, and a chronology.

Blake’s Art8↤ 8. “Blake’s Art” here includes only unengraved series of illustrations
of the works of others, such as Milton or Gray. For his drawings for his own works in illuminated printing,
see Part I: “Blake’s Writings”; for his drawings for commercial book illustrations, see Part III.

A handsome new edition of Paradise Lost with Blake’s drawings is an
agreeable work to handle and own but offers nothing new to the scholar.

Blake’s Commercial Engravings

A textless and one might almost say pointless new edition of the engravings for Blair’s
Grave (1808) appeared.

Trifling Blake sketches for Darwin’s Botanic Garden (1791) and Hayley’s
Designs to a Series of Ballads (1802) have been newly uncovered.

A new copy of Blake’s elusive print for The Ladies New and Polite Pocket
Memorandum-Book (1782) was discovered by David Bindman in an album of fashion plates and has now
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passed, like so many other fascinating Blake disjecta membra, into the collection of Robert
N. Essick at the Bibliotheca La Solana. No copy of the book itself has yet been discovered.

The history of Blake’s nineteen watercolors (1805) for Blair’s Grave
(1808) rediscovered in 2001 becomes yet more bizarre. From about 1836 to 2001 they were in the collection of
the Stannard family, whose latest heirs in Glasgow lost sight of their significance. They went for a risible
sum as part of a small family library to a Glasgow general second-hand bookstore called Caledonia Books, where
they were apparently taken to be colored engravings—though no engraving for Blair’s
Grave colored by Blake is known.9↤ 9. A copy of the quarto Blair’s Grave (1808) in the Huntington is skillfully hand
colored, but not by Blake. From Caledonia Books they were acquired, perhaps on approval, for £1,000 by a Yorkshire
bookseller named Paul Williams. All this was discovered by a brilliant journalist named Martin Bailey who
succeeded where all the warranted Blake scholars who had seen the watercolors10↤ 10. Dr. E. B. Bentley, G. E. Bentley, Jr., Professor David Bindman, Mr. Martin Butlin,
Professor Robert N. Essick, Dr. Robin Hamlyn, Dr. Rosamund Paice, Professor Morton D. Paley. and tried to trace their history had failed.

But the drama does not end there. The Tate, doubtless the most appropriate home for the Blair
watercolors, was given an option to buy the drawings at £2,000,000 (or about £100,000 each), later raised to
£4,200,000 plus £700,000 tax, and started scampering about to raise such a huge sum. At this point, the sale
hung fire while a legal sideshow determined who really owned the designs and on what terms they had or should
have changed hands. When this issue was resolved, the Tate heaved an institutional sigh of relief and
doubtless prepared publicity about acquiring the most sensational Blake find for a century—when they
discovered that the Blair watercolors had been abruptly acquired at a yet larger price by the London dealer
Libby Howie, ostensibly for an unnamed American collector. The latest information is that they are languishing
in a London bank vault, perhaps waiting for a better offer or for permission to export them, a permission
which is unlikely to be granted them without a struggle. In sum, the Blair watercolors have returned almost to
the status quo ante; the existence of the drawings is known, their authenticity (unlike their price) is
unquestioned, and a few have been reproduced, but they are as inaccessible as ever. At least one Blake
scholar’s request to see them has been politely put off sine die.

It seems that the more expensive Blake’s works become, the less visible they are likely to
be to serious Blake scholars. Fortunately there are many exceptions to this gloomy rule. Long life to the
generous!

Blake Catalogues and Exhibitions

The Huntington held an exhibition of its Blake holdings, with some of its gaps filled in from
the extraordinary collection of Robert N. Essick, who also prepared the exhibition, though—alas!—there was
no catalogue worthy of the institution or the curator.

The exhibition in Kyoto was short on original works by William Blake, even books with his
commercial engravings, but the catalogue and exhibition were very rich in the history of Blake enthusiasm in
Japan. In this area the catalogue is a major contribution to scholarship, going far beyond Blake
Studies in Japan (1995) and all other works on the subject known to me.

John Windle produced a catalogue of Blakes with something for every taste and pocketbook,
from obscure reprints to the finest tempera still in private hands, from $3.95 to a price so high it would be
embarrassing to print it (“Price on Request”).

In 2002 Northwestern University Library held a modest exhibition of books with Blake’s
commercial engravings.

The Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo held a little exhibition of Blake, chiefly
Job and Dante prints, but there was no catalogue.

Books Owned by William Blake the Poet

The name of William Blake Esq. appears as a subscriber not only in Joseph Thomas’s
Religious Emblems (1809), but also in a newly discovered prospectus for the work, indicating
that William Blake Esq. had been among the first to subscribe to the book, probably as a result of a private
solicitation among the author’s friends—the poet was certainly a protégé of Joseph Thomas. And the fact
that Thomas’s designer J. Thurston is also dignified by the otherwise unwarranted “Esq.” suggests that
it is the poet-artist William Blake who subscribed to Thomas’s book and not one of the legions of other
William Blakes who lived in London at the time.11↤ 11. See “My Name is Legion: for we are many’: ‘William Blake’ in London 1740-1830,”
Appendix VI (829-46) of BR (2).

Scholarship and Criticism

Books

No book recorded here compares in novelty or lasting significance to Joseph Viscomi’s
Blake and the Idea of the Book or E. P. Thompson’s Witness against the
Beast, both of 1993—but then, these are monuments of Blake scholarship, and one should not expect their
ilk annually.

Of several of the books here I can give no opinion because I have not seen them. Joyce
Townsend, ed., William Blake: The Painter at Work (2003) promises well, for her previous
highly technical work on Blake’s paint media is wonderfully accomplished and original. Shoichi Matsushima,
Blake no Shiso to Kindai Nihon: Blake wo Yomu [The Idea of Blake and Modern
Japan: A Reading of Blake] (2003) and Fumi Nakayama, William Blake: 200 Nen go no
Seikimatsu [William Blake: Blake in 2000] (2001) are inaccessible to me because of my
scandalous ignorance of Japanese.

Derek Pearsall, William Langland, William Blake, and the Poetry of Hope
(2003), though separately published, is merely the text of a lecture, perhaps chiefly valuable to students of
the Poetry of Hope.

Dóra Janzer Csikós, “Four Mighty Ones Are in Every Man”: The Development
of the Fourfold in Blake (2003) is a Hungarian doctoral dissertation concerned with “personality
typology” based on physiognomy in The Four Zoas which may seem exotic to those unfamiliar
with the Szondi test or “system of drives.”

Saree Makdisi, William Blake and the Impossible History of the 1790s
(2003) carefully uses the “varieties of radical ideology” among Blake’s contemporaries (26) to
illuminate with admirable sensitivity Blake’s works of the 1790s, especially America.

John Pierce, The Wond’rous Art: William Blake and Writing (2003) is
concerned with “the way in which the graphic and the oral are used as conceptual fields in Blake’s
works” (27). It is not significantly related to calligraphy or handwriting.

Nick Rawlinson, William Blake’s Comic Vision (2003) makes a
surprisingly strong case that “Blake was a subtle, profound and skilled comic writer” whose “work seems
to pulse with comic energy.” His definition of “comic” focuses upon joy, which gives him surprisingly
wide scope.

Frederick Sontag, Truth and Imagination: The Universes Within (1998) is a
“quest for the new vision in which Blake specializes,” especially in Chapter 1, “Exploring the Worlds
within the Mind.”

Janet Warner, Other Sorrows, Other Joys: The Marriage of Catherine Sophia
Boucher and William Blake (2003) is a cheerful “tapestry of fact and fiction” in which the facts are
carefully reported from the poet’s life and writings and the fiction imports graphic sex, genteel or at
least artistic crime, secret societies, and drugs, with a plausible stress upon banality in Catherine. An
example (264-65) derives from Blake’s letter to Thomas Butts of 2 October 1800:

William was sitting on the Sea Shore yesterday and had a wonderful Vision. He said that the Light was
reflecting off the Sands, and each particle of light was a Man, and every stone and herb and tree that he saw
was in Human Form, and that finally all Human Forms became One, and he was part of it, and so was I and [his
sister] Cathy, and Mr. Hayley, and Mr. and Mrs. Butts also.
I am now baking bread.

David Weir, Brahma in the West: William Blake and the Oriental
Renaissance (2003) is an earnest and intelligent study of Hinduism as its theological and political
contexts were perceived in London (not in England or “the West”) particularly in the pages of the
Analytical Review in the 1790s. The most sensational event in London then was the long drawn-out
trial of Warren Hastings for, among other things, abuse of his power while Governor General of India, and Weir
points out that the trial was, and was widely seen to be, a political issue including attacks on or defense of
colonialism. Some readers of the book may wonder at his confidence or his evidence “that Blake read
[Volney’s] The Ruins” (51) or “that he would have read” “the Gita” (99), but the
political and theological context of Hinduism in the 1790s in London is usefully established.

There are also new editions (not just reprints) of Ackroyd’s Blake
(1995) in Japanese (2002), of Altizer’s New Apocalypse (1967) with a new appendix on what
he’d do differently this time (2000), and of Muggeridge’s Third Testament (1976) in
2002.

Essays

There are in this checklist many reprints in Bloom’s anthology of fragments of Blake
criticism (2003—40 excerpts) and detailed proposals for lectures at the Kyoto Blake Conference
(2003—37)—though the full essays were (or doubtless will be) meritorious. There are collections of essays
in Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly, ed. Morris Eaves and M. D. Paley (2003—19),
The Cambridge Companion to William Blake, ed. Morris Eaves (2003—16), and
Taiyoka (1927—11), plus contemporary directories referring to Blake (43) and records of his
father and brother voting (6) which, oddly, have never appeared in a Blake bibliography before.

Significant but—alas!—unseen essays on Blake include John Beer, Romantic
Consciousness: Blake to Mary Shelley (2003), which has a section on Blake. And Shoichi Matsushima, Hisao
Ishizuka, Masashi Suzuki, Yoko Ima-Izumi, and Yuko Takahashi, Ekkyo suru Geijutsuka—Ima Blake
wo Yomu: William Blake: A Border-Crossing Artist—Reading his Works Now (2002) seems to be a collection
of Japanese essays on reading Blake.

The Tools of Scholarship

Among the most obvious tools of scholarship is finding lists of what is known about the
subject. These include G. E. Bentley, Jr., with the assistance of Dr. Hikari Sato for Japanese publications,
“William Blake and His Circle: A Checklist of Publications and Discoveries in 2002,”
Blake 37.1 (summer 2003): 4-31, which covers all newly discovered publications with Blake in the
title or works about him of more than five consecutive pages, together with all briefer references to Blake
published before 1863, especially those before 1831. These lists are extensive but hardly comprehensive; for
instance, in the present one for 2003, there are works published in 2002 (29), in 1863-2001 (101), in 1831-63
(2), and even the most heavily mined field before 1831 (30), indicating embarrassingly how much had previously
been overlooked.

A similar but much more comprehensive undertaking is in Robert N. Essick, “Blake in the
Marketplace, 2002,” Blake 36.4 (spring 2003): 116-37. His essay records in wonderful
detail not only original works by Blake and his close friends such as George Cumberland and John Linnell, with
mini-essays in the captions of works reproduced, but also curiosities and rumors of troop movements on the
borders of buying and selling. He seems to know everyone worth knowing in the worlds of Blake and book-,
print-, and picture-selling and to persuade them to give up their dearest secrets. And when his
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report does not identify a shy vendor or buyer, he probably knows who it is but is too discreet to tell
us.

Francisco Gimeno Suances, “Notas sobre la difusión, influencia y recepción crítica de
la obra de William Blake en España durante las décadas de 1920 y 1930,” Los Papeles Mojados
de río seco Año 5, no. 6 (2003): 38-45, considerably expands our information about works concerning
Blake in Spain as long ago as the 1920s. The number of Spanish works previously unknown to Blake
bibliographers indicates how difficult it is for the virtual monoglots among us such as myself to read
everything in their field about Blake; even impressively multilingual bibliographers such as D. W. Dörrbecker
seem to have overlooked some of these Spanish publications.

There are also recorded here surprisingly extensive lists of directories and elections in
which are given the addresses and votes of Blake’s father and brothers, though he himself rarely appears in
the directories, and apparently he never voted, though eligible to do so.

There are several essays of importance about Blake drawings. Robert N. Essick and Rosamund
A. Paice, “Newly Uncovered Blake Drawings in the British Museum,” Blake 37.3 (winter
2003-04): 84-100, report on nine previously unknown sketches by Blake on the versos of other drawings
discovered when they were dismounted for photography, and Martin Bailey, “From £1,000 to £10 Million in
Two Years for Newly Discovered Blake watercolours,” Art Newspaper online, finds crucial
details of the history of Blake’s nineteen watercolors for Blair’s Grave which had
eluded all the Blake scholars panting hard on the trail. Troy Patenaude, “‘The glory of a Nation’:
Recovering William Blake’s 1809 Exhibition,” British Art Journal 4.1 (2003): 52-63,
discovers crucial details of the arrangement and dimensions of the rooms of Blake’s family home at 28 Broad
Street and from them deduces plausibly the hanging sequence of the pictures exhibited there in Blake’s
private exhibition of 1809-10 and the dimensions of Blake’s long-lost and huge “Ancient Britons.”

Joseph Viscomi provides a masterful, brief account of Blake’s “Illuminated Printing”
in The Cambridge Companion to William Blake, ed. Morris Eaves (2003), 37-62. And G. E.
Bentley, Jr., “Blake and God in the Garden: The Life of a Myth,” Descant 34.4 (winter
2003): 112-23, musters detailed evidence once again to persuade the credulous of the mythical (i.e., untrue)
character of the story of Blake and Catherine naked in their garden reading Paradise
Lost—or climbing trees or dancing.

Critical Essays: The Plums in the Pudding

The connection between Blake and Hebrew is surprisingly extensive. Not only are there newly
recorded editions of Blake in Hebrew (1968, 1986, 1997), but there is a new doctoral dissertation on the
subject.12↤ 12. Rachel Leah Wagner, “‘Words of eternity in human forms’: William
Blake’s Transformation of Styles, Forms, and Genres of the Hebrew Bible in ‘Jerusalem,’”
DAI 64 (2003): 1294-95A. More accessibly, Sheila A.
Spector, “Blake’s Graphic Use of Hebrew,” Blake 37.2 (fall 2003): 63-79, discusses how
Blake used the forms of the Hebrew alphabet, particularly aleph. And Ted Holt, “Blake’s ‘Elohim’ and
the Hutchinsonian Fire: Anti-Utopianism and Christian Hebraism in the Work of William Blake,”
Romanticism 9 (2003): 20-36, provides fascinating evidence that “Blake’s reading of the
Pentateuch was undoubtedly coloured by Hutchinsonian interpretations of it.” Investigation of the distant
but tantalizing connection between Hutchinsonians, Thomas Butts, and Epsom might lead the investigation yet
closer to Blake.

Similarly, Ian Balfour, “The Mediated Vision: Blake, Milton, and the
Lines of Prophetic Tradition,” Chapter 6 of his The Rhetoric of Romantic Prophecy (2002),
argues learnedly and persuasively that “Blake engages the Hebraic, Christian, and English prophetic
traditions in a spectacular and highly self-conscious way.” And Robert Ryan, “Blake and Religion,”
The Cambridge Companion to William Blake, ed. Morris Eaves (2003), 150-68, provides a useful
account of what we know of Blake’s religion based on the distressingly meager evidence.

In the same collection, David Bindman’s essay on “Blake as a Painter,” 85-109,
provides a confident and comprehensive synopsis which is just what such a Companion calls
for, and Jon Mee, “Blake’s Politics in History,” 133-49, argues once again that “Blake was always a
deeply political writer.”

In the exceedingly unlikely vehicle of an online undergraduate B.A. thesis (1973, revised
1986), Edward Robert Friedlander, M.D., “William Blake’s Milton: Meaning and Madness,”
argues with distressing or at least surprising plausibility that “Blake’s poetry and paintings present
classic illustrations of the schizophrenic experience. . . . We can look to the schizophrenic experience to
understand Blake’s works.” Dr. Friedlander’s evidence, and his training as a student of literature and
of medicine, make his conclusion worth consideration.

Blake in the service of somewhat rabid anti-capitalism has been found by Ron
Heisler13↤ 13. In a letter to me. These Blake entries do not
appear in the checklist below because I do not report there incidental excerpts from Blake. from the
Christian Socialist of 1884-85. These consist of: quotation from “Auguries of Innocence” ll.
75-76, 51-52, 81-84, 79-80, 113-18 following but not visibly attached to E. L. Garbett, “Interest” (an
attack on it), Christian Socialist (March 1884): 157; “Holy Thursday” from
Experience following but not visibly attached to an excerpt from Darkness and
Dawn in Christian Socialist (July 1884): 27; “Mammon” (i.e., “I rose up at the
dawn of day” [Notebook, p. 89] ll. 1-12, 21-22, 13-18, 25-28), Christian Socialist (Aug.
1884): 37, which may well have been the stimulus for the skillful anonymous poem called “Oh, Mammon, Hear
Us!” (March 1885: 155) parodying a popular hymn; Anon., “In Answer to a Prayer for Light,”
Christian Socialist (March 1885):
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254-55, on “the principles of Anarchism” reprinted from Liberty (“Boston, U.S.”),
concluding with a “message . . . sung to us by William Blake”: “I give you the end of a golden thread
[i.e., ‘string’]” [Jerusalem, pl. 77]. Perhaps they appeared on the initiative of the
journal’s founding co-editor J. L. Joynes.

Roads Not Taken: The Nuts in the Fruitcake

A tiresomely perennial issue in Blake studies is the allegation of his Cockneyism. For
instance, a recent critic writes of “the Cockney in which he [Blake] wrote and, no doubt, spoke,”14↤ 14. David Punter, “Blake and Gwendolen: Territory, Periphery and the Proper Name,” in
English Romanticism and the Celtic World, ed. Gerard Carruthers and Alan Rawes (2003)
68. and the allegation is likely to recur. Is it
relevant to the author of Songs of Innocence and of Experience?

The answer may depend on which of the changing meanings of “Cockney” is being used. The
term has been variously applied. Over the last half-millennium or so “Cockney” has been used to mean: an
egg; a mother’s darling, a milksop; a wanton townsman; a person born in London within the sound of Bow
bells; a class term of vilification, as in Blackwood’s dismissal of Keats and Leigh Hunt as members of
“The Cockney School of Poetry”; one who loves London inordinately;15↤ 15.
Definitions 1-5 derive from the OED; 6 is a modern usage, to be found in, for instance,
Ackroyd’s Blake. and a Humpty Dumpty definition of what I want it to mean.

I hope we may agree that Blake is not “an egg.” Besides, “‘It’s very
provoking,’ Humpty Dumpty said after a long silence, ‘to be called an egg—very!’”
Blake’s contemporaries would not have called him a “milksop,” particularly those who had encountered him
in anger. Nor is “a wanton townsman” more relevant. Blake was certainly not “born within the sound of
Bow bells,” and indeed the place of his birth near Golden Square had not long before 1757 been an area of
some fashion—aristocrats and future prime ministers had been christened as he was at St. James, Piccadilly.
Blake is no more a member of the Cockney School of Leigh Hunt and John Keats than he is of the Lake School of
Wordsworth and Coleridge. In a more common pejorative context, he does not share the “Cockney”
characteristics of gross ignorance of high-culture sophistication, he is not aspirately-challenged, omitting
the “h” sound in “hope” and “how” and wantonly adding it as in “honor” and “hour”—and,
besides, these cultural and linguistic characteristics of “Cockney” are largely anachronistic when applied
to Blake, their widespread use being popularized by Dickens subsequent to Blake’s death.16↤ 16. For a summary of the scholarship here, see The
Stranger from Paradise (2001) 4fn. Blake’s attitude toward London is
devastatingly demonstrated in his “London” with its universal “marks of woe,” in “the terrible
desart of London” and “the manacles of Londons dungeons dark.”17↤ 17. Blake’s letters of 14 and 1 September 1800. And one may speculate on the aptness of “Cockney” as applied to that
great London-lover Dr. Johnson. But I am a sufficient democrat to agree with Humpty Dumpty: “‘When
I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it
to mean, neither more nor less.’” “‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be
master—that’s all.’”

Division I: William Blake

Part I: Blake’s Writings

Section A: Original Editions, Facsimiles,18↤ 18. In this checklist, “facsimile” is taken to mean “an exact
copy” attempting very close reproduction of an original named copy including size of image, color of
printing (and of tinting if relevant), and size, color, and quality of paper, with no deliberate alteration as
in page order or numbering or obscuring of paper defects, or centering the image on the page.Reprints, and Translations

Watermarks: A Cumulative Table

Addendum

fleur-de-lis

“The Approach of Doom” (BMPR)

The Book of Thel (1789)

Plate 6

A new sketch on the verso of the previously known one was reported and reproduced by
Robert N. Essick and Rosamund A. Paice, “Newly Uncovered Blake Drawings in the British Museum,”
Blake 37.3 (winter 2003-04): 84-100.

Europe (1794)

Copy a

Previously unknown sketches on the versos of pls. 1 and 18 were reported and reproduced
by Robert N. Essick and Rosamund A. Paice, “Newly Uncovered Blake Drawings in the British Museum,”
Blake 37.3 (winter 2003-04): 84-100.

History: Sold, with George Richmond’s sketch of Blake on his death bed, by a London
dealer in 1942 to William Inglis Morse, the son of Samuel F. B. Morse the painter and inventor, from whom they
passed to Morse’s son-in-law Professor Frederick Hilles, who gave them about 1955 to Professor Harold Bloom
(from whose letter to me of 22 July 2003 all this information derives).

Letters (1791-1829)

18 January 1808 to Ozias Humphry (A)

History: Offered in Roy Davids’ catalogue (March 2000) of his exhibition at the Fine
Art Society (London) called “The Artist as a Portrait,” #10 (first and last pages
reproduced, £40,000), and sold to an anonymous private collector, according to Robert N. Essick, “Blake in
the Marketplace, 2003,” Blake 37.4 (spring 2004): 120.

It was edited by P.N. van Eyck, printed by Joh. Enschedé with Jan van Krimpen’s
Lutetia type, and published by Alexandre Alphonse Marius Stols at his Halcyon Press in 325 copies, “a
brilliant example of their superior craftsmanship,” according to Oskar Wellens, “A Dutch Bibliophile
Edition of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1928),” Blake 37.3 (winter
2003-04): 104-07.

History: A previously unknown copy, not corresponding to the only ones in private
hands,19↤ 19. Copy E, sold from Pickering & Chatto catalogue 686 [1991], lot
164, to a private American collector, and copy M, the Buxton Forman copy, not traced since it was sold at
Anderson Galleries, 15 May 1920, lot 35. was evaluated by Ursus Books
(New York), according to Robert N. Essick, “Blake in the Marketplace, 2003,” Blake 37.4
(spring 2004): 116-17.

History: On the death of Sir Paul Getty on 17 April 2003, the Wormsley Estate and
Library passed to the Wormsley Foundation, perhaps permanently.

Contemporary Facsimile

Copy Beta

By the courtesy of its owner, a new examination was made of the watercolored thin paper
guest leaves (mounted on thick paper host leaves watermarked J Whatman | 1821). A flashlight shining through
the host and guest leaves, the latter extensively colored, revealed the following watermarks on the guest
leaves:20↤ 20. Pace BBS p. 132, which says that there is no watermark on the colored
guest leaves.

EEN | 0 (both “E”s and the “0” uncertain, the “0” under the first
hypothetical “E”) on Pl. 22, first page of “Spring”

Blake used paper from the same papermakers for his own works,21↤ 21. According
to the cumulative table of watermarks in paper used by Blake in his writings, drawings, and printing,
Blake 31.4 (spring 1998): 171-73. though the paper he used was thick and heavy, unlike the
thin leaves bearing the watercolors for Songs facsimile Beta.

It includes poems from Poetical Sketches (14), Songs of
Innocence (17), Songs of Experience (15), and others (17).

“how do we know but ev’ry bird that cuts the airy way, / Is an immense
world of delight clos’d to your senses five? From ‘the marriage of heaven and hell.’” (London:
Spoon Print Press, 2002).

A folded leaf in the shape of a bird with designs by Linda Anne Landers.

In England’s Green and Pleasant Land. Illustrated by Julie Haigh.
([No Place:] Bradford and Ilkley Community College, 1986) 4°, 14 loose leaves printed on one side only, in a
portfolio; no ISBN.

The “Jerusalem” lyric from Milton with “A collection of
illustrations suggested by William Blakes [sic] From Milton [sic] comparing his satirical
comments of the Eighteenth Century dawn of industrialization to the Political climate of England in the
1980’s,” “limited edition of 20” copies.

The work seems to be a very slightly altered version of Poesía
Completa, tr. Pablo Mañé Garzón (1984) <Blake (2003)> with the same strange
list of titles (though lacking Visions of the Daughters of Albion).

Despite the title, the text includes poems from Songs of Experience
and Blake’s Notebook. There are seven charming pasted-on sepia vignettes on india paper, apparently from
18th-century engravings, the initial letter to each poem is printed in red, “A Poison Tree” in
Experience (56-57) is entitled “Christian Forbearance” (as in Notebook p. 114), and “A
Cradle Song” (from Notebook p. 114) is inserted in Experience without Blake’s
authorization.

They announce the additions of a biography of Blake by Denise Vultee and the editors,
with 109 reproductions; Alexander S. Gourlay, glossary of Blake terms,22↤ 22. See also Alexander Gourlay, “A Glossary of Terms, Names, and Concepts in Blake,”
272-87 of Cambridge Companion to William Blake, ed. Morris Eaves (2003). chronology of Blake’s life and works; Urizen (B); the
engravings for Blair’s Grave (1808) and Blake’s own engraving of “Death’s Door”;
Blake’s designs to Milton’s “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity” (Thomas set in the Whitworth
Gallery, Manchester); and Paradise Regained.

Part II: Reproductions of Drawings and Paintings

Section A: Illustrations of Individual Authors

John Milton, “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity” The drawings were reproduced
in the William Blake Archive.

John Milton, Paradise Lost

Paradise Lost: A Poem in Twelve Books with a Preface by Peter
Ackroyd, an Introduction by John Wain and Illustrations by William Blake. (London: The Folio Society, 2003)
4°, no ISBN.

Ackroyd’s “Preface” (ix-x) is about Milton and Blake, Wain’s introduction about
Milton. The reproductions are from the larger, Butts set (Butlin #536).

New Locations: A or B (1808) University Art Museum (Kyoto City University of Arts); D
(1870) G. E. Bentley, Jr. (portfolio of engravings only, no text, in a cover blind-stamped with designs
identical to those on the GEB copy of the Hotten 1870 facsimile, the prints with the same variants of
lettering [replacing the Spanish of 1826] as in 1870, e.g., “Tis” [lacking the apostrophe] in the
quotation for pl. 7, “The descent of Man”).

The Blair engravings (1808) and the separate print of “Death’s Door” engraved by
Blake were added to the William Blake Archive in 2003.

Drawings

History: Blake made “a set of 40 drawings from Blair’s poem of the Grave 20 of which
he [Cromek] proposes [to] have engraved by the Designer and to publish them” (according to Flaxman’s
letter of 18 October 1805); Cromek bought twenty drawings for £21 (according to his letter to Blake of May
1807), commissioned Louis Schiavonetti to engrave them, and published them in 1808; after Cromek’s death in
1812 the drawings, copperplates, and copyright passed to his widow Elizabeth Hartley Cromek, who promptly sold
the copperplates and copyright for £12023↤ 23. BR
(2) 315. to Ackermann (who published the prints in 1813 and 1826); she vainly offered the
watercolors on 3 February 1813 to William Roscoe “with other curious Drawings of his, valued at thirty
Pounds and likely to sell for a great deal more if ever the man should die”; the Blair watercolors were sold
at C. B. Tait’s auction in Edinburgh with the property of Thomas Sivright of Meggetland, 10 February 1836,
Lot 1835 (“Volume of Drawing, by Blake Illustrative of Blair’s Grave, entitled ‘Black Spirits and White,
Blue Spirits and Grey’”24↤ 24. This title was not with the designs when they were rediscovered in 2001. ), for
£1.5.0; acquired by John Stannard (1794-1882), watercolor artist of Bedford, from whom it passed to his son
Henry John Stannard (1840-1920), watercolor artist, thence to his grandson Henry John Sylvester Stannard
(1870-1951), and from him to John’s great-grandson, “and then a
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nephew in Glasgow”,25↤
25. Martin Bailey, “From £1,000 to £10 Million in Two Years
for Newly Discovered Blake Watercolours,” Art Newspaper, which I have seen only online at
<http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=11037>; this is the source for all the Stannard
provenance and some details of the sales in 2001-03.
See also entries for Karin Goodwin; Anon., “Lost Blake
Paintings Fetch £5m . . .”; Anon., “Blake Paintings May Leave UK . . .,”; Will Bennett; and Anon.,
“Collector Buys Lost Blake Paintings for £5 Million . . . .” “The
portfolio was finally sold [as colored prints] in 2000, as part of a small family library, to Caledonia Books,
a general second-hand bookshop in Glasgow . . . run by Maureen Smillie” who offered them at £1,000; in
April 2001 the portfolio was acquired by Dr. Paul Williams of Fine Books, Ilkley, Yorkshire, who associated
Jeffrey Bates of the Leeds bookshop of Bates & Hindmarch with the purchase; the portfolio was offered for
£2,000,000 (later raised to £4,200,000 plus £700,000 tax) to the Tate, but the sale was held up by a
lawsuit initiated by Caledonia Books (claiming that the portfolio had not been purchased but simply taken on
approval); the suit was resolved when Messrs. Williams and Bates agreed to share the profits with Caledonia
Books, and the portfolio was abruptly sold through Libby Howie to an unidentified buyer in the United States,
though in November 2003 the drawings remain in a bank vault in London.

There is no title page or text of Blair, but it includes reproductions of the engravings,
“To the Queen” and “Of the Designs.”

Jacob Bryant, A New System, or An Analysis of Ancient Mythology
(1774-75)

Edition

§(New York: Garland, 1979)

George Cumberland, Thoughts on Outline (1796) New Location:
Bibliothèque nationale.

Erasmus Darwin, The Botanic Garden (1791) <BB
#450> Plate 1, “The Fertilization of Egypt”: A new sketch (of the sistrum only) on the verso of the
previously known one was reported and reproduced by Robert N. Essick and Rosamund A. Paice, “Newly Uncovered
Blake Drawings in the British Museum,” Blake 37.3 (winter 2003-04): 84-100.

William Hayley, Designs to a Series of Ballads (1802)

The drawing of “The Resurrection” with sketches on the verso related to the
Designs (1802) was offered in Agnew’s 130th Annual Exhibition
of Watercolours & Drawings, 5-28 March 2003, lot 17, for £260,000, according to Robert N. Essick,
“Blake in the Marketplace, 2003,” Blake 37.4 (spring 2004): 119.

The Ladies New and Polite Pocket Memorandum-Book, For the Year of our
Lord 1783 ([1782])

<BB #479, BBS pp. 232-34>

A copy of Blake’s engraving of “A Lady in the full Dress, & another
in the most fashionable Undress now worn,” [T]S del, W.B. sc, is in an oblong octavo nonce collection
of 18th and early 19th-century fashion plates pasted in chronological order on both sides of stiff,
unwatermarked paper acquired in 2003 by Robert N. Essick.

Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1797)

New Locations: Bibliothèque nationale; University Art Museum (Kyoto City University of
Arts).

Part IV: Catalogues and Bibliographies

1919

§“Shirakaba bijutsukan” setsuritsu no tame ni: William Blake fukusei
hanga tenrankai mokuroku [An Annotated Catalogue of an Exhibition of Reproductions from the
Works of William Blake: For the Establishment of Shirakaba Art Museum]. (1919). In Japanese.

*Scott Krafft. The Commercial Mr. Blake: William Blake as Book
Illustrator and Copy Engraver: An Exhibition at the Charles Deering McCormick Library of Special Collections,
Northwestern University Library March-May 2002. ([Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Library, 2002])
A leaf 35.4 × 21.5 cm. folded in three.

A flier contrasting Blake’s “remarkably unmarketable dreamworlds of his prophetic
illuminated books” with the “‘commercial’ works . . . after his own designs” exhibited here,
including Blair’s Grave, Hayley’s Ballads (1805), Young’s
Night Thoughts (1797), Illustrations of the Book of Job, and Blake’s
separate portrait of Lavater.

There are separate sections with comments about Blake by the artists DeLoss McGraw
(Blake’s “best work is embarrassing,” therefore good), Tom Knechtel (“Blake is how I think”), Nancy
Jackson “He . . . went into the darkness, the unknown . . . and he sent back messages that we can all learn
from”), and Sharon Ellis “It’s this clarity of vision . . . that continues to startle”).

David Bindman, “William Blake” (338); the Blakes are #144-54, and #171-74 are Flaxman
drawings for Dante, The Odyssey, and Aeschylus.

27 November-27 December 2003

*The Glad Days in the Reception of Blake in Japan: The International
Blake Conference “Blake in the Orient”: A Concurrent Exhibition [27 November-27 December 2003 at Kyoto
University Museum]. Organized by Masashi Suzuki and Steve Clark. (Kyoto: Blake Conference Committee, 2003)
4°, ii, 93pp., no ISBN. In English (1-53, 93) and Japanese (54-92).

Masashi Suzuki and Steve Clark, “Preface.” 1-2, 54.

Sori Yanagi, “Message.” 3, 55. About his father.

*Anon. “The Glad Days in the Reception of Blake in Japan.” 5-6, 56. “Our Exhibition
aims to show how Blake was received in the early period of his introduction into Japan, mainly through
documents.”

Kozo Shioe, “On the ‘[Taro] Nagasaki Collection.’” 7-9, 57-59.

His 52 Blakes went mostly to Kyoto City University of Arts.

The catalogue entries, first in English and then in Japanese, are by Kozo Shioe and
Yumiko Goto. Each section begins with a short essay.

Part I consists of “Japan’s Encounter with Blake,” subdivided into “Master
Writers of the Meiji Period and Blake” (11-14, 65), “The Introduction of Blake’s Art by Soetsu Yanagi
and the Shirakaba Group” (15-20, 66-68), “Blake Exhibitions Organized by Shirakaba”
(21-25, 69-70), and “The Development of Blake Reception and the 100th Anniversary of the
Death of Blake” (26-37, 71-77).

403 Blake entries at $3.95 to $68,750 and “Price on application,” including his
tempera of “The Virgin Hushing the Young John the Baptist” (1799), Job, Blair’s
Grave (1808, 1813, 1870) (6 copies), and Stedman’s Surinam (1796) with
contemporary coloring.

Part V: Books Owned by William Blake of London (1757-1827)

Joseph Thomas, Religious Emblems (1809) <BB
#746>

“William Blake, Esq.” also appears in the prospectus for the book:
↤ 26. A copy is in Religious Emblems in Glasgow University Library: SM
1853.

§Proposals for Publishing by Subscription a Series of Engravings on Wood, from Scriptural
Subjects in the Manner of Quarles’s Emblems . . . after the design[s] of J. Thurston Esq. and Executed by
the most eminent engravers on wood26

Notice that the designer is identified as “J. Thurston Esq.,” making it seem more likely
that “William Blake, Esq.” is the poet and designer, despite the unusual honorific.

According to Altizer’s new “Afterword” (201-09 of the 2000 edition), the chief
changes needed in the book are taking into account the “proliferating” Blake scholarship and criticism;
the integral relationship of “Blake’s vision and the Christian epic tradition”; and the
“extraordinarily complex” nature of “Blake’s relationship to Gnosticism” (201, 204).

Anon. “Blake Paintings May Leave UK: The future of a set of watercolours by William
Blake remains uncertain as the foreign buyer decides whether to take them abroad.” BBC
News 13 May 2003 and <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts/3024811.stm>.

Anon. “Illustrious Corner in Soho: The House Where Blake Was Born 200 Years Ago.”
Times 14 Nov. 1957: 3.

A sign-writer is on the ground floor and a “waistcoat tailor” is on the next floor up
a “very narrow stairway.”

Anon. “Lost Blake Paintings Fetch £5m: A clutch of William Blake watercolours which
were found in a second-hand bookshop have sold for £5m.” BBC News 19 Feb. 2003 and
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts/2781267.stm>.

*Bailey, Martin. “From £1,000 to £10 Million in Two Years for Newly Discovered Blake
Watercolours: A set of 19 watercolours by William Blake was sold to a Glasgow bookshop for a pittance in 2000.
It was then recognized and sold to an overseas collector. An export licence deferral is now expected and Tate
would like to acquire it.” Art Newspaper online 2003
<http://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=11037>.

An account full of original matter about the ownership and sale of Blake’s watercolors
for Blair’s Grave.

Andrew Elfenbein, “Recent Studies in the Nineteenth Century,” Studies in
English Literature 1500-1900 42.4 (2002): 837-903. “While Bentley’s book is definitive in the amount
and accuracy of the information it presents, it is not easy to get from it a sense of Blake’s inner life and
development”; with “136 plates of high quality,” it gives “an excellent visual summary of Blake’s
art” [846].)

Anon., Independent on Sunday 13 April 2003. (A “perceptive and
forceful study” which recognizes that “Blake’s genius was above all pictorial.”)

Shernaz Cana, Aligarh Critical Miscellany 12.2 (2000 [Autumn 2003]):
201-08. “William Blake has been brought alive before us in such an inspired way that it almost seems that
the biographer too has been included in Blake’s great visionary company.”)

*Robert N. Essick. “Blake in the Marketplace, 2002.” 116-37. (A customarily
magisterial survey, with an appendix [137] on new information for his catalogue of The Separate
Plates of William Blake [1983].)

W. H. Stevenson. “The Sound of ‘Holy Thursday.’” 137-40. (About the music played
at the ceremony in St Paul’s.)

Wayne C. Ripley. “Erdman’s Pagination of The Four Zoas.” 140-43.
(The renumbering of Vala pp. 19-21, 87-90, 105-16 in the Erdman-Magno reproduction [1987] is
followed “inconsistently” in the text and ignored “completely” in the notes to Erdman’s edition of
The Complete Poetry and Prose [1988], so Ripley provides four tables of corrections to the
Poetry and Prose.)

Reviews

Jason Snart. Review of Kathleen Lundeen, Knight of the Living Dead: William
Blake and the Problem of Ontology (2000). 144-48. (The book is “most valuable” for its “analysis of
Blake’s use of metaphor and rhetorical devices” [146].)

Anon. 151. (Mostly an invitation to “visit the newsletter section of our web site at
www.blakequarterly.org.”)

Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly

Volume 37, no. 1 (Summer [July] 2003)

G. E. Bentley, Jr., with the assistance of Dr. Hikari Sato for Japanese publications.
“William Blake and His Circle: A Checklist of Publications and Discoveries in 2002.” 4-31. “Blake
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studies are impressively and increasingly international and polyglot” [5].)

Nelson Hilton. Review of K. E. Smith, An Analysis of William Blake’s Early
Writings and Designs to 1790 (1999). 36-38. “Some useful contextualization notwithstanding, this effort
does not live up to its claim to offer ‘An Analysis’” [38].)

Margaret Storch. Review of Christopher Z. Hobson, Blake and
Homosexuality (2000). 38-39. “Hobson’s book opens up the important topic of Blake and homosexuality
as never before [showing] Blake’s empathy with male homosexuality” [39].)

Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly

Volume 37, no. 2 (Fall [October] 2003)

*Rosamund A. Paice. “Encyclopaedic Resistance: Blake, Rees’s
Cyclopœdia, and the Laocoön Separate Plate.” 44-62. (She suggests “that
the Laocoön plate was begun as a commercial plate, and that it may have been more than just
a by-product of the Rees commission” [60].)

*Sheila A. Spector. “Blake’s Graphic Use of Hebrew.” 63-79. “Believing in the
Adamic theory of language, Blake incorporated Hebraisms into his verbal art . . . Blake seems to have unified
all of his earlier experimentation around the concept of the alef” [78]. According to
Anon., “Corrigenda,” Blake 37.3 (winter 2003-04): 111, the reproductions of
“Laocoön” and “Job’s Evil Dream” are from the Fitzwilliam Museum and the Pierpont Morgan Library,
not the Library of Congress.)

Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly

Volume 37, no. 3 (Winter 2003-04)

*Robert N. Essick and Rosamund A. Paice. “Newly Uncovered Blake Drawings in the British
Museum.” 84-100. (The nine slight pencil drawings [all reproduced] were discovered on the versos of Blake
drawings and prints when they were dismounted; they include designs for Thel pl. 6 on the
verso of a design for the same subject, the sistrum in Fuseli’s “The Fertilization of Egypt” engraved by
Blake for Darwin’s Botanic Garden (1791) on the verso of Fuseli’s sketch for the whole
design, and unrelated designs on the versos of Europe (a) pls. 1 and 18, one for Blake’s
colorprint of “God Judging Adam.”)

*Alexander S. Gourlay. “‘Friendship,’ Love, and Sympathy in Blake’s
Grave Illustrations.” 100-04. (Gourlay proposes that, among the newly discovered watercolors
for Blair, the one of eight floating female figures should be called “Friendship” and the one of two men
in hats walking along a road, inscribed “Friendship,” should be called “There’s no bye-road | To
bliss”; both are reproduced.)

Oskar Wellens. “A Dutch Bibliophile Edition of The Marriage of Heaven and
Hell (1928).” 104-07. (The Marriage of Heaven and Hell <BB
#106> was edited by P. N. van Eyck, printed by Joh. Enschedé with Jan van Krimpen’s Lutetia type, and
published by Alexandre Alphonse Marius Stols at his Halcyon Press in 325 copies, “a brilliant example of
their superior craftsmanship.”)

Review

*Nelson Hilton. Review of G. E. Bentley, Jr., The Stranger from
Paradise (2001). 107-11. (The book is “the most useful and reliable guide to Blake’s life,” “an
epitome of scholarship” exhibiting remarkable “sensitivity to tone and content,” “a glorious capstone
to his [Bentley’s] labors” [108].)

Newsletter

Anon. “Corrigenda.” 111. (In Sheila A. Spector, “Blake’s Graphic Use of
Hebrew,” Blake 37.2 [fall 2003], the reproductions of “Laocoön” and “Job’s Evil
Dream” are from the Fitzwilliam Museum and the Pierpont Morgan Library, not the Library of Congress,
according to Robert N. Essick.)

Anon. “Color-Printing Debate.” 111. (Martin Butlin, “William Blake, S. W. Hayter
and Color Printing,” and the response of Robert N. Essick and Joseph Viscomi “are now available
exclusively on the journal’s web site at www.blakequarterly.org.”)

The second edition, ed. Maria McGarrity, is reprinted in Appendix 2 (379-422) of
Chaucer Illustrated: Five Hundred Years of The Canterbury Tales in Pictures, ed. William K.
Finley
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and Joseph Rosenblum (New Castle [Delaware]: Oak Knoll Press, and London: The British Library, 2003).

§Chong, Cue-huan. “[Blake’s Poetry in the Judeo-Christian Line of Prophecy.]”
Milton Studies: The Journal of Milton Studies in Korea 11 (2001): 171-201. In Korean, with a
summary in English.

Chou, Man-wen. “A Study of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and
Songs of Experience Reflecting the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul.”
Taipei shangyie zuanke xuebao [Journal of National Taipei College of Business]
3 (Jan. 1974): 223-53.

Detailed analyses of “The Lamb,” “Infant Joy,” and “The Divine Image” from
Innocence, of “The Tyger” and “The Human Abstract” from
Experience, and of “Holy Thursday,” “The Chimney Sweeper,” and “Nurse’s Song” from
both Innocence and Experience.

Clark, Steve. “Blake.” The Year’s Work in English Studies 80
(Covering work published in 1999) (2001): 455-65.

An “essentially psychological” argument focusing on The Four Zoas
based on “Lipót Szondi’s theory of mental functioning, more precisely the personality typology based on
the Szondi test” or “system of drives” which “revives the age-old theory of physiognomy by assuming
that one can determine character by facial appearance” (14, 45).

Csikós, Dóra. “‘Urizen Who Was Faith & Certainty Is Changed to Doubt.’ The
Changing Portrayal of Urizen.” Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies 3.2
([Debrecen, Hungary] 1997): 131-59. <§Blake (2003)>

Using as her “main framework” “Lipót Szondi’s theory of . . . personality
typology,” she concludes that “Urizen has an intrinsically progressive role in The Four
Zoas” (132, 150).

*Dickinson, Patric. William Blake: Three Talks: 22 September The Man
and his Background; 29 September Engraver and Painter; 6 October The Poet. 3-11. ([?London,?1962]).

Directories27↤ 27. All but those for The Post-Office Directory (1809), (the wrong?) James
Blake, William Staden Blake, Butts, and Rev. Mr. Mathew are recorded in Blake Records
(second edition [2004]) 735-36.

[W.] Holden’s Triennial Directory [Corrected to the end of April]
1799 (London, [1799]) for “Blake William Engraver Lambeth Green” and
“Blake, James Hosier, 28, Broad-street, Carnaby-market”

The Universal British Directory of Trade and Commerce, comprehending
Lists of the Inhabitants of London, Westminster, and Borough of Southwark; And of all the Cities, Towns, and
principal Villages, in England and Wales; with the Mails, and other Coaches, Stage-Waggons, Hoys, Packets, and
Trading Vessels. . . . Together with an Historical and Particular Detail of the Trade, Polity, and
Manufactures of each City, Town and Village. [5 vols.] I (London, 1790) for James Blake,
Hosier, at Broad Street, Golden Square

Directory to the Nobility, Gentry, and Families of Distinction, in London,
Westminster, &c (London [1796])

The Universal British Directory, V (1797)

Most of these directories are in the British Library, a few in Bodley. See Charles W. F.
Goss, The London Directories 1677-1855: A Bibliography (London, 1932), and Gareth Shaw and
Allison Tipper, British Directories (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1988).

R. Paul Yoder, Studies in Romanticism 42 (2003): 405-12 (“We should
be grateful . . . but we might also wish that he had interrogated his own argument with the same rigor he
attempts to bring to Jerusalem” [412]).

Saree Makdisi. “The Political Aesthetic of Blake’s Images.” 110-32. (“The
‘meaning’ of Blake’s text emerges from the process of reading itself” [112]. Material from it
reappears in his William Blake and the Impossible History of the 1790s [2003] Chapter 4:
“Weary of Time: Images and Commodity in Blake” [155-203].)

“As a medical doctor” in 1986, he concludes that “Blake’s poetry and paintings
present classic illustrations of the schizophrenic experience. So far as I know, these are the best, most
beautiful, and most meaningful ones ever created. They are great value by themselves. . . . We can look to the
schizophrenic experience to understand Blake’s works.”

Harrison, John R. “‘Empire is no More’: William Blake, Tom Paine and the American
Revolution.” Literature and History 3S, 7.1 (1998): 16-32. <§Blake
(1999)>

An interesting but not persuasive argument that “Blake withdrew The French
Revolution [1791] himself . . . because he had decided to publish a much more seditious work,” i.e.,
America (1793) “primarily through the influence of, and his support for, Paine”
(17).

Hogarth, William. ANECDOTES | OF | WILLIAM HOGARTH, | WRITTEN BY HIMSELF: | WITH | ESSAYS
ON HIS LIFE AND GENIUS, AND CRITICISMS ON HIS WORKS, | SELECTED FROM | WALPOLE, GILPIN, J. IRELAND, LAMB,
PHILLIPS, AND OTHERS. | TO WHICH ARE ADDED | A CATALOGUE OF HIS PRINTS; ACCOUNT OF THEIR VARIATIONS, AND
PRINCIPAL COPIES; LISTS OF
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PAINTINGS, DRAWINGS, &c. | - | [Motto from Juvenal] | [dragon vignette] | = | LONDON: | J.B. NICHOLS AND
SON, 25, PARLIAMENT STREET. | - | 1833. Small 4°.

For Blake’s Beggars’ Opera plate (174-75) it records the etched
state, 29 Oct. 1788 (174) and the four states: etching, finished proof, “open letters,” and letters filled
up (323), apparently the first such record.

Holt, Ted. “Blake’s ‘Elohim’ and the Hutchinsonian Fire: Anti-Utopianism and
Christian Hebraism in the Work of William Blake.” Romanticism 9 (2003): 20-36.

Very interesting parallels between Blake and John Hutchinson (1674-1737), whose
“project was to attribute a trinitarian, Christian meaning to one of the Hebrew names for God,
‘Elohim’” (note “Triple Elohim,” of Milton pl. 11, l. 22); “Blake’s reading of
the Pentateuch was undoubtedly coloured by Hutchinsonian interpretations of it” (21).

Höltgen, Karl Josef. “Religious Emblems (1809) by John Thurston and
Joseph Thomas, and its Links with Francis Quarles and William Blake.” Emblematica 10 (1996
[1999]): 107-43.

“Blake and the Emblem” (132-39); the subject of “Blake and the emblem is
fascinating but elusive” (132).

§Hoshino, Eriko. “Vala, moshikuwa Four Zoas Dai Ichiya ni okeru
Tharmas to Enion no Kankei no Hokai—Gnosis teki Kenchi kara [The Disruption of Relations between Tharmas and
Enion in Night the First in Vala or The Four Zoas—from a Viewpoint of Gnosis].”
Saitama Junshin Joshi Tanki Daigaku Kiyo [Bulletin of Saitama Junshin Women’s
Junior College] 19 (2003): 89-95. In Japanese.

§Ikuta, Kotaro. “Blake no yobuki no soga [Blake’s Illustrations to The
Book of Job].” Atorie [Atelier] 3, no. 2 (1926): 40-45. In
Japanese.

The International Blake Conference “Blake in the Orient”: Programme
[29-30 November 2003]. Organized by Masashi Suzuki and Steve Clark. (Kyoto: The Blake Conference Committee,
2003) 4°, 46 pp., no ISBN.

Masashi Suzuki and Steve Clark. “Preface.” 1. “The broad aim of the International
Blake Conference is to bring attention to both the longevity and complexity of Blake’s reception in Japan
and elsewhere in the East.”

The contents are proposals30↤ 30. In the separate one-leaf program of the conference, some
titles are different; they are identified below within square brackets. A few (not recorded below) omit
subtitles; no title is given for Connolly, Phillips, Tambling, Taylor, and Turner; and Georgia Dimitrakopoulou
appears on the shorter list but not on the longer one. for papers, all save the “plenary” papers of Worrall and Shaffer being 20 minutes
long: David Worrall. “The Book of Thel and The Swedenborg Project for an African Colony
[Thel in Africa: Swedenborgians and the Idea of the Orient].” 8. “The Book of Thel is
Blake’s pondering on the possibility, particularly in its inclusion of women in a passive role, for the
success of such a colony.”

Tristanne Connolly. “Blake and Wilkins’ Translation of the
Bhagavad-Gita.” 13.

Keri Davies. “Rebekah Bliss: Collector of William Blake and Oriental Books.” 14. If
Blake knew her collection, “this would open up possibilities for a reconsideration of Oriental influences on
Blake’s work.”

Sibylle Erle. “William Blake and the Representation of Race in Late Eighteenth-Century
England [Popular Culture].” 15. “I will discuss character representations with special reference to
concurrent body theories about soul-body relationships” concentrating “on the popular reception of
Lavater’s ideas on national physiognomies.”

David Fuller. “Madness as ‘Other’: Blake and the Sanity of Dissidence [Madness as
‘Other’].” 16.

Yumiko Goto. “The Shirakaba Group and the Early Reception of
Blake’s Art Works in Japan.” 17. An examination of how their exhibitions (1915, 1919) “came to be staged
and their influence on the art worlds of Tokyo and Kyoto” as well as “the image of Blake which the
Shirakaba group . . . built up from their writings.”

Thomas Grundy. “Ontological Difference and the Liberation of Representation in
Blake’s America.” 18. “America is as much about the liberation of
America from King George’s tyranny as it is about the liberation of mythology from the tyranny of the
Priesthood.”

Christa Knellwolf. “The Cultural Politics of William Blake’s Exoticism.” 20. Blake
“took recourse to exotic imagery and mythical language in order to uncover the full scope of human emotions
and states of mind.”

Kaoru Kobayashi. “Interpretation of Blake’s Philosophy in Japan through the Changes
of Translation of the Poem ‘The
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Fly.’” 21. “This paper would like to argue for the view of Blake as an early forerunner of existential
philosophical thought.” Keiko Kobayashi. “Blake and Oe Kenzaburo.” 22. She is concerned with “the
overwhelming evocative power of Blake’s polysemous fragments to inspire him” and Oe’s understanding of
“Blake and his poetry and painting as a whole.”

Susan Matthews. “Black/Blake: Africa and Utopia in the 1790s.” 24. She is concerned
with “Blake’s references to Africa in the 1790s in the light of contemporary writing about the continent .
. . particularly on the meanings of blackness and the sun in writing by George Cumberland . . . in
The Captive of the Castle of Senaar [sic].”

Hiroko Nakamura. “Blake’s Influence on Muneyoshi Yanagi and his Pilgrimage to
Buddhism.” 25. Concerned with “three aspects of Blake’s influence on Yanagi: intuition, individuality
and dualism.”

Kazuya Okada. “Blake and Egypt as the Orient.” 29. “Blake’s knowledge of a wide
variety of Egyptian backgrounds fundamentally motivated him in the formulation of his own mythology. . . . I
will highlight the issue of Egypt-Freemasonry.”

Peter Otto. “Nebuchadnezzar’s Sublime Torment: William Blake, Arthur Boyd, and the
East.” 30. About the more than seventy Nebuchadnezzar designs of Arthur Boyd (1920-1999), a prominent
Australian painter.

John William Phillips. “Blake’s Question (from the Orient).” 31. Concerned with
“three main kinds of question to be found in Blake’s writings . . . questions answered; . . . questions
without answer; and . . . questions unstated but to which answers are . . . given.”

Lalitha [Lalitah] Ramamurthi. “The Nature of Evil and Mysticism in Blake in the
Framework of Hinduism.” 32.

Kozo Shioe. “Blake and Young Painters of the Kyoto School.” 33. The young painters
here are Bakusen Tsuchida (1887-1936), Kagaku Murakami (1888-1939), and Hako Irie (1887-1948).

Mei-Ying Sung. “Blake and the ‘Chinamen’ [The Printing Techniques of Blake and
Chinese Genre Prints and Book Illustrations].” 34. The “Chinamen” make pottery, but “Blake’s designs
were never used by any ceramic makers.”

Jeremy Tambling. “Blake’s Night Thoughts.” 36. He “argues that
there is not so much fascination with daybreak in Blake’s poetry, as the impossibility of the day breaking,
even if ‘night is worn.’”

Minne Tanaka. “Colour Printing, East and West: William Blake’s Large Colour Prints
(1795/1804) and Ukiyo-e.”[e] 37. Proposes “to examine and reveal the process, technique and modifications of
his colour printing, as well as giving an interpretation of the designs.”

Takao Tanaka. “Blake’s Zen in the Illustrations of the Book of
Job.” 38. “The state of innocence, which may be seen as the most important thing in Blake’s life,
is almost the same as the mind of Zen.”

David Taylor. “‘The First English Mystic’: Lafcadio Hearn, Blake and Late Romantic
Perception of Japan.” 39.

Shunsuke Tsurumi. “Yanagi and Jugaku in the Fifteen Years War (1931-45).” 40. “I
felt what Yanagi wrote on Blake served as a bridge from Christianity to Buddhism.”

Barnard Turner. “An Anglophonic View of Blake through his Reception in Sato and Oe.”
41. Concerned primarily with Sato Haruo’s Gloom in the Country [The Sick
Rose] and episodes in Oe’s works.

Chitta R. Unni. “The Lamb and the Tiger in the Land of Sakura: Blake and the
Revitalization of Japanese Subjectivity.” 42. After some “preliminary discussion” of Blake and other
matters, “My paper . . . will engage the Japanese intellectual and artistic effort to articulate a
distinctly Japanese subjectivity.”

Jason Whittaker. “‘Walking thro’ Eternity’: Blake’s Psychogeography and Other
Pedestrian Practices.” 44. Iain Sinclair, Lights Out for the Territory, “described Blake
as ‘the father of psychogeography,’ and the purpose of this paper is to consider some of the ways in which
Blake’s use of symbolic (de)territorialisations has been employed by writers such as Sinclair.”

§Janssens, V. “Blake, Pope and Voltaire, or the Art of Imitation.”
Studies in Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 10 (2001): 171-86.

In his portraits of Pope and Voltaire, Blake alludes to Pope’s “Elegy to the Memory
of an Unfortunate Lady” and Voltaire’s “Vers sur la mort de Mlle Lecouvreur, fameuse actrice” based on
Pope’s poem (147).

*Johnson, Mary Lynn. “Human Consciousness and the Divine Image in Blake’s Watercolor
Designs for the Bible: Genesis Through Psalms.” Chapter 2 (20-43) of The Cast of Consciousness:
Concepts of the Mind in British and American Romanticism. Ed. Beverly Taylor and Robert Bain. Afterword
by M. H. Abrams. (New York, Westport [Connecticut], and London: Greenwood Press, 1987) Contributions to the
Study of World Literature, Number 24.

Because “Blake wanted to communicate through the media of all the arts in a composite
manner . . . [he] may not be and probably cannot be hedged by the ut pictura poesis
tradition or the ut musica poesis tradition or any other tradition” (45).

“By restructuring the conventional relationship between image and word, Blake mounts a
radical critique of the tradition of the sister arts” (B, 31). The 2000 publication does not seem to refer
to that of 1996.

§Kim, Heesun. “[The Rebirth of the Poet-as-Prophet and the Poetics of Imagination in
Blake’s Milton.]” Milton Studies: The Journal of Milton Studies in
Korea 9 (1999): 105-34. In Korean, with a summary in English.

§Kim, Young-shik. “[Blake’s Perception of the Limitations in Milton’s Prophetic
Vision.]” Milton Studies: The Journal of Milton Studies in Korea 11 (2001): 149-69. In
Korean, with a summary in English.

A short life of Blake with brief descriptions of Poetical Sketches, Songs,
Thel, Marriage, Visions, Europe, Song of Los,
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“Auguries of Innocence,” The Four Zoas, Milton, and Jerusalem, with
translations of some poems (e.g., “To Autumn”).

Lundeen, Kathleen. Knight of the Living Dead: William Blake and the Problem
of Ontology. (2000) <Blake (2001)>

Review

Jason Snart, Blake 36.4 (spring 2003): 144-48 (the book is “most
valuable” for its “analysis of Blake’s use of metaphor and rhetorical devices” [146]).

Lussier, Mark. “‘Rest before Labour’: The Pre-Text/s of Blake’s The
Four Zoas.” Romanticism on the Net 27 (Aug. 2002)
<http://www.erudit.org/revue/ron/2002/v/n27/006563ar.html>.

About ambiguities in the aphorism on the title page of The Four
Zoas.

*Makdisi, Saree. William Blake and the Impossible History of the 1790s.
(Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2003) 8°, xviii, 394 pp., 28 reproductions; ISBN:
0226502597 (cloth) and 0226502600 (paper).

A politically sensitive study, particularly of America; “In
considering the 1790s, then, we need to keep sight of distinctions among varieties of radical ideology”
(26).

Material from “The Political Aesthetic of Blake’s Images,” Chapter 6 (110-32),
The Cambridge Companion to William Blake, ed. Morris Eaves (2003) appears here in Chapter 4:
“Weary of Time: Image and Commodity in Blake” (155-203), and material from his essay in The
Cambridge History of Romanticism reappears in Chapter 5: “Blake and Romantic Imperialism”
(204-59).

A densely factual and original reconstruction with diagrams of the rooms in which
Blake’s exhibition was held and of the order and exact placement of the pictures one flight above his
brother’s shop at 28 Broad Street. Doubtless more of the facts supporting his hypotheses are given in his
York M.A. thesis called “Window to the World: A Study of William Blake’s 1809 One-Man Exhibition”
(2001).

“There can be no doubt at all, I think, that what most appealed to Blake in
Swedenborg’s doctrines was the notion of a new era? and [sic] that he valued it not because it was a
startlingly original teaching but precisely because it was in keeping with a much older tradition of mystical
prophecy.”

Sato, Hikari. “‘It is not in Terms that Reynolds & I disagree’: William Blake
to [and] Sir Joshua Reynolds.” Kobe-Daigaku Bungakubu Kiyo: Bulletin of the Faculty of Letters,
Kobe University No. 30 (2003): 19-49. In Japanese.

Sato, Hikari. “‘Mite Shri so, Shiri te na Miso’: Yanagi Muneyoshi to William Blake:
‘The Eye sees more than the Heart knows’: William Blake and YANAGI Muneyoshi.”
Tohoku-Gakuin Daigaku Eigo Eibungaku Kenkyujo Kiyo: Journal of Institute for Research in English
Language and Literature, Tohoku-Gakuin University No. 28 (1999): 1-23. In Japanese, with English
abstract.

About “the relationship between his [Yanagi’s] study of William Blake and his folk
craft movement.”

Sato, Hikari. “‘Rintrah roars & shakes his fires in the burdend air’:
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell to Ikareru Yogensha: ‘Rintrah roars & shakes his fires in
the burdend air’: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and an Angry Prophet.”
Kobe Daigaku Bungakubu Kiyo: Bulletin of the Faculty of Letters, Kobe University No. 29 (2002):
1-26. In Japanese.

Schock, Peter A. “Blake, the Son of Fire, and the God of this World.” Chapter 2
(41-77, 170-75) of his Romantic Satanism: Myth and the Historical Moment in Blake, Shelley, and
Byron. (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

The drawings for Blair’s Grave were “found by chance [by two book
dealers] in a second-hand [Glasgow] bookshop”; “The Tate Gallery had been prepared to pay £4.9 million
for them, but a dealer [Libby Howie] acting for an anonymous client” bought them for a trifle more.

Especially about the authorship and handwriting in the marginalia to Lavater’s
Aphorisms: “What I have tried to show here is the degree to which textual and material issues
pervade the marginalia” (153).

“PREFACE: Blake on the Origin of Creativity and Understanding” (ix-xiii). The book is
a “quest for the new vision in which Blake specializes” (1), especially in Chapter 1: “Exploring the
Worlds within the Mind” (1-45).

“Blake’s female antivisionaries in his later poems . . . are grounded in the
realities of the age” (8).

Voting

1749: Peter Leigh, Esq; High-Bailiff. A Copy of the Poll for a Citizen for
the City and Liberty of Westminster; Begun to be Taken at Covent-Garden, Upon Wednesday the Twenty-second
Day of November; and Ending on Friday the Eighth Day of December 1749. Candidates, The Right Hon. Granville
Levison Gower, Esq; commonly called Lord Trentham: and Sir George Vandeput, Bart. (London: Printed for J.
Osborn, at the Golden Ball in Paternoster Row; And Sold by the Book-sellers of London and Westminster
M.DCC.XLIX [1749]) On 25 November 1749 the poet’s father “James Blake Glasshouse-str.
[St James] Hosier” voted for Vandeput [a Tory (d. 1784)] and not for Gower [(1721-1803), son of Earl Gower,
Whig Lord of the Admiralty, brother-in-law of the Duke of Bedford]; Leveson-Gower won by 170 votes.

1774: Poll Book. On 12 October 1774 the poet’s father “James Blake Broad St. Carnaby Markt. Hosier & Haberdasher” voted for Earl Percy [Col. Hugh
Percy (1742-1818), son of the Duke of Northumberland, friend of the King’s party] and
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Lord Clinton (not for Lord Montmorency, Lord Mahon, or Humph Coles). Percy won.

1780: Thomas Corbett, Esq. High Bailiff. Copy of the Poll for the Election
of Two Citizens to serve in the Present Parliament for the City and Liberty of Westminster: Begun on
Thursday the 7th, and ended On Saturday the 23d September 1780. Candidates, The Hon. Charles James Fox, Sir
George Brydges Rodney, Bart. The Right Hon. Thomas Pelham Clinton (commonly called Earl of Lincoln). . . .
(London: Printed and Sold by W. Richardson, opposite Salisbury Street, in the Strand, 1780). The poet’s
father “James Blake Broad Street Hosier” voted for Fox and wasted his second vote. Fox, famous as an
opponent of Royal privilege, and Admiral Rodney, hero of the battle of Cape St. Vincent (Jan. 1780), won by a
large majority.

1784 April 1-May 17: The poet’s father and brother

Jas Blake Broad Street Hosier
John Blake Marshall Street Baker

voted for Fox and wasted their second vote, which could have been given for Sir Cecil Wray, Bart. (1734-1805)
supported by the Tories, or Admiral Samuel Lord Hood (1724-1816). The result was Hood 6,694, Fox 6,233, and
Wray 5,998.

1790: Blake’s sometime partner James Parker, 27 Broad Street, Engraver, voted for Fox
(who won) and wasted his second vote which could have been for Hood or John Horne Tooke (1736-1812) who had
opposed Fox.

Though the poet as a rate-payer was eligible to vote, apparently he never did
so.31↤ 31. These voting records are recorded in Blake Records, second edition
(2004) 736-37 (1774, 1780, 1784, 1788), 741n (1788, 1790), 742 (1784, 1788), 840 (1749, 1774), 841 (1774,
1784, 1788, 1790), and 842 (1784, 1788). The manuscript records are in Middlesex County Record Office and the
printed poll books in Westminster Public Library.

It is “a tapestry of fact and fiction” in which the carefully reported facts come
from the poet’s life and writings and the fiction is Kate’s notebook, poems (some of the lines in
Vala are hers), visions, her forgeries of Flaxman and Fuseli, her French lover Paul-Marc
Philipon (369, 370), Blake’s affair with the actress and singer Elizabeth Billington, his indulgence in
opium and other drugs, and a good deal of sexual detail. There are “Biographical Notes” on real people
(365-68) and “Author’s Note” (369-71). The fiction is often persuasive: “There are no Evil Spirits,
Kate. There are only Human Spirits” (8).

In 2001, an extract about Catherine’s stillborn child called “Blake’s Wife”
appeared on the Blake web site. <Blake (2002)>

*Weir, David. Brahma in the West: William Blake and the Oriental
Renaissance. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003) 8°, xiii, 170 pp., ISBN: 0791458172 and
0791458510.

About Blake’s “relationship to Indic culture in three . . . contexts: the political
[Chapter 1], the mythographic [Chapter 2], and the theological [Chapter 3]” largely “as conveyed to Blake
through the medium of the Analytical Review” (16, 36).

Appendix A is “Mythographic Material from Joseph Priestley’s Comparison
of the Institutions of Moses with those of the Hindoos” (129-31) (mostly lists of names and books).
Appendix B is “Synopsis of The Four Zoas” (133-42).

Weng, T.S. “Notes and Observations on William Blake’s Songs of
Innocence and Songs of Experience, Showing the Two Contrary States of the Human
Soul.” Guoli bianyi guan guankan [Journal of National Institute for
Compilation and Translation] 8.1 ([Taipei] June 1979): 1-95.

A life of Blake plus notes and comments on the Songs.

Whittaker, Jason. “Blake.” The Year’s Work in English Studies 81
(Covering work published in 2000) (2002): 634-41.

*Williams, Nicholas M. Ideology and Utopia in the Poetry of William
Blake. (Cambridge: University Press, 1998) Cambridge Studies in Romanticism, 28. <Blake (1999)>

Pace Zhifan Chen, “Shi kong zhi hai—chenggong hu bian sanji zhi san [The Sea of Time
and Space—Third Essay Written on the Side of Chenggong Lake],” Lianhe bao
[United Daily News, Taipei] 8 Jan. 1994: 37, Blake is not “a painter” or “a mystic poet”
but “an engraving artist,” and the first two lines of “Auguries of Innocence” (“To see a World in a
grain of Sand | And a heaven in a wild flower”) are not “frequently cited.”

§Yano, Atsushi. “Bakemono: Henkaku ki no Motarsu vision to Sono Otoshigo tachi William
Blake: A Study of Images in Art and Literature with Special Reference to the Decline and Fall of Order:
Monstrous and Imaginary Beings in Blake, Gruenewald, and Japanese Literature.” Nishinippon
Kogyo Daigaku Kiyo [Bulletin of Nishinippon Institute of Technology] No. 17 (2001):
11-17. In Japanese.

Yeats, William Butler. “William Blake and his Illustrations to the Divine Comedy.”
(1896) B. Reprinted as 176-225 of his Ideas of Good and Evil. (London, 1903) C. (New York,
1903) D. Second Edition (London, 1903) E. Third Edition (London and Dublin, 1907) F. Reprinted as 138-175 of
Ideas of Good and Evil, which in turn is Vol. VI of The Collected Works in
Verse & Prose of William Butler Yeats. (1908) <BB 3051 #A-F> G. §Zen-aku no Kannen [Ideas of Good and Evil]. Tr. Makoto Sangu into Japanese.
(Tokyo: To-undo Shoten, 1915) H. Reprinted in 116-45 of Yeats’s Essays and Introductions.
(1961) <BB #3051G>

Read, Dennis M. “Thomas Stothard’s The Pilgrimage to Canterbury
(1806): A Study in Promotion and Popular Taste.” Chapter 6 (211-31) of Chaucer Illustrated:
Five Hundred Years of The Canterbury Tales in Pictures. Ed. William K. Finley and Joseph Rosenblum. (New
Castle [Delaware]: Oak Knoll Press, and London: British Library, 2003).

The contemporary popularity of the picture is probably due chiefly to “the orchestrations
of publicity, endorsements, and huckstering by its proprietor, Robert Hartley Cromek” (211).

Part IV (221-23) deals somewhat summarily with Blake’s claim that Stothard stole his idea
for a painting of the procession of the Canterbury Pilgrims: “There is no way to verify this claim, although
Cromek certainly was capable of such theft. Cromek’s claim of the painting’s origin, as elaborated in the
‘Biographical Sketch of Robert Hartley Cromek’ in the 1813 Grave is, to say the least,
fanciful,” for, among other things, it dates Cromek’s conception of “the idea of embodying the whole
procession in a picture” to a time “some ten months after Cromek began exhibiting the painting in his
home” (222).